Love Missed By The World

Every child has a father, but many children have no Dad.  It can also be said that every child has a mother, but some children have no Mom.  However, more have Moms than Dads.  The distinction of becoming a father begins with sperm and a momentary experience, but the distinction of a Dad is lifetime experience and relationship that includes a long term period of care, love, values and bonding.  In years, before the end of the twentieth century, why did an increasing percentage of youngsters have no Dads?  Because marriages were and are breaking up in significant numbers; because more single women are giving birth and electing to keep their babies on their own; because artificial insemination is increasing, even among lesbians — the number of children without Dads is increasing.  During l994, it was announced that at least half of all children under the age of eighteen years would spend some significant time in their homes without one parent in residence — usually the father.  (Following the statistics for thirty years, I found no improvement, and those denied in the earlier generation are continuing to represent the breakdown in social solidarity related to the children they generate.)  One in four children under eighteen is living with a parent who never married.  Of single parent families, 86% are headed by mothers.  A majority of those are not sufficiently independent economically, and the poverty rate is high – highest for minority groups where all the negatives are larger.  In some of those homes there appear adult single males in intimate relationship with the mother for weeks or months at a time.  The children may have difficulty relating to this person who will likely move away within a few weeks or months after arrival.  The man becomes an interloper even though he, and the mother or the children appear to understand what is happening.  He is generally addressed by his first name.  The mother feeling her emotional needs currently more important than the long term welfare of her children accepts the circumstances.  Nearly everyone acknowledges the problem, but public reluctance to change course in self-discipline, and the prevailing belief that social freedom approves license for just about any human conduct, preclude programs for family improvement.  New definitions of marriage and family, yet unproved, may help in finding a way for deprived children.

The church, perhaps for a period in current history, ought to risk some of its general support from society, by taking a firmer stand on public morals and ethics, which includes the solidarity of the family.  Such a stand might well start with men — sons, fathers, grandfathers and uncles. They can, with what they may feel is some sacrifice, give themselves to Christian ideals and the family in public identity and honor, in humility and fidelity, in love and care.  Without care there is only a shell of love.  There is a practical sense in which every man, even a very young man, unmarried, can be a Dad to every kid in his experience.  Every lad I see can sincerely be called son in my love for children.  I feel just as moved by the daughters.

A friend confided his most striking experience of 1993, twenty five years ago at this editing.  It occurred when he attended an eminent program of Promise Keepers.  More than fifty thousand men were gathered in a Colorado stadium listening to the man on the platform.  Closing his speech the speaker invited all the ministers in the massive crowd to walk down to the platform.  Pastors began to move out until two thousand were standing on the football field. In a moment of silence a layman’s voice cried out from the stands, I LOVE YOU!  The statement was spontaneous, not designed in the program.  The moment seemed poignant.  Perhaps a hundred men followed up and shouted to the pastors, I LOVE YOU!  Then as though led by a great invisible director the 50,000 men began to repeat in unison, I LOVE YOU!  The magnificent rolling cadence of the words continued for about ten minutes, as the men were elevated above themselves in a chorus of love for their pastors.  The words and the Presence will never leave me, said my friend as his voice broke in the recollection of the ecstasy of love that God can give.  Is this so great experience to be limited to one sublime moment only?  I think not.  This was a spontaneous expression of love for spiritual fathers, much like what might very well have been expressed toward caring fathers in the human context.  Every parent should pray to be a Dad or Mom to their children.  All adults, aunts and uncles, grand-parents, singles, may serve their extended families so to support (join) that nurturing love.